未校對

International Conference on General Education
in Universities and Colleges
June27-29,1994
Hsinchu, Taiwan, Republic of China

University General Education: Ideals, Contents and Problems
--With Special Reference to the Experience at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Hsiu-hwang Ho
Department of Philosophy
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, H.K.
*Appears in General Education Towards the Twenty-First Century: Proceedings of the First International Conference on General Education in Universities and Colleges, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROC, 1995.

Introduction
In modern time, the so-called university general education usually assumes a rather vague of fuzzy identity. There has never been a set of characteristics common to, and distinctive of, all the things referred to by that name. Consequently general education in this sense has never satisfactorily been characterized essentialistically. In fact we can never succeed in saying , precisely and without ambiguity, what general education really is, or what is the essence of general education.
University general education is not, and indeed should not be, one single thing, be it internally coherent or not. It is, and should be allowed to be or become, potentially a multiplicity of many things, strategically structured and dynamically administered for some conceived educational purposes. For instance, university general education could be, among other things, an educational ideal held by a university, by a community, by a society, by a nation, or by a culture; a pedagogical strategy trying to broaden the perspective of the students while taking certain courses or engaging in certain academic activities; a cultural orientation aiming at the cultivation of the mentality, the personality, or the character of the university graduates; a teaching philosophy advocating the nature of the teaching and the learning at the universities; a socio-political movement searching for the enhancement of certain value, or rather an anti-movement looking for an alternative to the current system; a specially designed program of studies with a description of the contents and a statement of the purposes; a cluster of university courses putting together under the name general education, with or without further divisions and sub-divisions, and so on and so forth. All of these and something more could be justifiably called by the sacred name general education without loss of consistency, cogency of dignity. In fact, even these different things, or shall we say these different aspects of general education, when readily grouped up either singularly or severally, can only be identified through fuzzy recognition, establishing what may be called fuzzy identity of the university general education.
In short, there is no real definition of the university general education in the traditional Aristotelian sense. We can never satisfy ourselves in saying that so-and-so and such-and-such and thus-and-thus, and so on and so forth, constitute the essential characteristics of the class of things under that name. There is no essence of university general education. Indeed all sorts of different things under this name do not make up a natural kind, as is called in philosophical discussions.
Consequently we shall in this discussion take a rather different approach. We shall not assume that university general education need some uniformly similar contents or outlooks. Instead, we shall consider it most natural and even extremely useful that there be different general education for different universities. Universities are very different in a good number of ways. They exist in different times as well as in different social and cultural environments. They entertain different visions and assume different missions. They enjoy different strength and suffer from different constraints. They consist of different academic disciplines and come up with different student populations. They are operating under different political systems and working under different moral codes. Besides, education can be profound, or it can be superficial. University General Education is even more so. It can offer intellectual illumination and inspiration, it can result in ideological bondage and academic stagnancy. Therefore, one of the most practical and useful ways of examining general education is looking through the existing examples, trying to see what are the desirable features---and for what reasons---of each of them. Afterwards, we may want to immitate those "successful" ones, those examplars---that is, those that stand out in our search for quality and excellence in general education---in our own contemplation, design, and implementation. That is why we refer to the Chicago model, the Harvard model, the Tokyo University model and so on; and that is how we pay our attention to the Carnegie Report (1977) or to the more recent American Colleges Task Group Report (1988).
In this paper, the author wishes to draw from his personal experience of more than 20 years at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, in the teaching and the administration of general education, some observations and comments concerning the concept and nature, the ideal and purpose, the implementation and administration, of university general education.

The Concept and Nature of University General Education
The Chinese University of Hong Kong celebrated her 30th anniversary last year. Those thirty years of her existence were not exactly smooth and totally peaceful. To say the least, the University has changed from a federation of three pre-existing founding colleges---Chung Chi, New Asia and United, to a unitary system; teaching departments of a discipline under different Colleges became one board of studies under the University---though they might still be housed in different buildings in different locations, on their original College site; and recently in 1991 the four-year university curriculum of degree-paper system became a total flexible credit unit system of virtually three-year programs of studies, (however, the degree examinations were abolished some years before) because the other university in Hong Kong of that time, the University of Hong Kong, had changed from a 4-year to a 3-year system since 1954 and her proposal to return to a 4-year curriculum failed to gain the necessary support from the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Government.
All these major changes, and the other chain-reactivechanges that go with them or after them , made the general education program at The Chinese University in a constant move. Changes of curriculum involve phase-in and phase-out overlappings. And in the past 20 years, general education program at the University had undergone major changes and overhauls at least four times. Particularlily during the past eight years, the tenure of the current Director of General Education, there have always been two distinct programs administered in the University at the same time: one for the new-comers, and the other for the old-timers.
Distinct programs have different contents and outlooks. But are they necessarily different when we consider the concept or the nature of general education they entertain?
The hard working of the Office of General Education (formerly Office of Director of General Education) in the past several years has been to keep the spirit, and so the concept and the nature, of the general education at the University basically and substantially intact while structures of the program and contents of the courses undergone a drastic transformation.
Compare the following two program structures co-existing until next year:

The "Old" Program (it was a new program just a few years ago):
University Courses (*indicates required areas)
*Area 1: Logical Thinking and Quantitative Skills
*Area 2: Chinese Culture
Area 3: Other Civilizations
Area 4: Computer and Computation
Area 5: Arts and Humanities
Area 6: Natural Science and Medicine
Area 7: Social Sciences and Management
College Courses (requirements varied with each College)
The "New" Program (this might become an old one in just three or four years as there is contemplation of another 4-year university system for every Hong Kong university in 1998!)
University Courses (*indicates the required area)
*Area 1: Chinese Culture
Area 2: Disciplinary Courses
Area 3: Interdisciplinary Courses
College Courses (requirements varied with each College)

We recognize, at the very first glance, the difference on their surface structure. However, they are to perform, hopefully, the same function and entertain the same conception of the general education at the University, i.e., to broaden the perspective and intellectual interest of the students, and so on. To do this, some rather complex and complicated implementation plan and administrative devices had to be invented and carefully put into work. For instance, to assure that students have "balanced" general education, different Colleges designated in the old program different combination of areas of courses for their students in different Faculties. And different Colleges came out with different patterns of required elective courses for students in the same Faculty! What a complicated task to accomplish, especially when we consider some students might change their majors and/ or minors, and even (or as a consequence) change their college affiliations! All this had been done remarkably well for several years between 1987-1992. (The reason why were these particular years is not apparent, but we shall not explain it here.) Of course, there is no such requirements practical in the current "new" system, as there are too few areas---there are only three of them, but too many courses---there are more than 110 of them, and more and more are added to the program each year, either to replace some existing ones or to complement and strengthen them, for the Colleges to manipulate. Nevertheless, a new system of course coding had been introduced to implicitly classify all the courses into different categories within one area, so that students will maintain as before, though not in exactly the same manner, a balance in their choice of general education courses to avoid concentration and repetition, while enjoying much flexibility in their choice of courses than was possible before.
What has been said above may give out the impression that the concept and the nature of general education have in fact never been changed, or can never be allowed to change, in the course of development of the University. This is certainly not the case. And let us reflect on this question now.

The ideal and Purpose of General Education
Between 1949 and 1956, about ten years before the inception of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, her three founding Colleges separately and independently established themselves in Hong Kong, either in answering to the need of those young ones who left Mainland China, or to fulfil some unrealized dream left over there, upon the change of hands in China in 1949. For instance, Chung Chi College was founded in 1951 to carry on the tradition of the Christian universities in China, and New Asia College saw the light of day in 1949 with a view to preserving and promoting the traditional Chinese culture, while the United College, itself the amalgamation of 5 existing smaller colleges, was established in 1956 to provide better post-secondary education for local students. (There was a fourth College, Shaw College, came into being as one of the Colleges of the University in 1990).
Each College has had her own educational ideal and philosophy if education. Take Chung Chi College for example. Being a Christian college, it was only natural , at least in her early stage of development, that moral education, in particular a Christian one, had been the backbone of her general education program. On the other hand, it surprised nobody when New Asia College strongly advocated the return to traditional Chinese values in her general education endeavors. It is therefore safe to say that before joining hands to form the University in 1963, each founding college had had her own educational ideal, moral mission and value commitment. These ideals, these missions and these commitments, when putting together, started a long chain of interaction and reaction that helped to form the spirit of the University today.
To confine, for the time being, to the case of Chung Chi College. Upon joining another two colleges to form the University, the College had a general education program which was in the main morally and religiously oriented. At that time, neither the name general education nor its Chinese counterpart was officially adopted as the designation of a college-wide educational endeavoring. This was true for all three Colleges. At Chung Chi, there were on one hand formal courses designed and administered in the light of her ideal and philosophy of education. For instance, a Freshman course called Philosophy of Life was taught college-wide with a text book especially written for this purpose. There was on the other hand, further non-course and not credit earning educational activities created and performed to help making the aim and purpose of the College visible, felt and appreciated. For instance, there was a Friday Assembly of teachers, students and administrators at the chapel on campus to worship, to share, to communicate, to learn and to teach. This was at that time, no less proclaimed, no less asserted and no less instrumental than formal courses taught. A relatively small college in the past made the informal and non-structured educational efforts like this as effective as, if not more so than, the formal and structured endeavors such as the offering of courses and administration of course examinations. In fact, it was the informal and unstructured aspects of general education that became more effective and useful in the cultivation of the College spirit among her students and in the assertion of her unique identity as a Christian College in the 50's and the 60's.
The concept and nature of general education was fairly clear here in Chung Chi's case, because it was defined, or at least delinerated, by the proclaimed ideal and purpose of the College. General Education in the universities is value-loaded. It may not be moral or religious in a narrower sense. But a true and successful general education program in the universities always entails some deep commitment in a philosophy, or an ethic, of higher education. General education does not come naturally. It was not driven by market force either. It derives its vitality from the commitment to our rationality (rationalities), to our sensibility (sensibilities), and to our humanity (humanities).
A general education in the universities without a vision, and hence a mission, is superficial and totally useless. Nowadays, it sounds fashionable and sensational for every university to introduce a general education program. But a lip-service is really a dis-service in the field of education. This is very much more so in the case of university general education.
During the 60's, something very important happened in the scene of Chung Chi's general education. A young scholar with a Christian family background arrived at Chung Chi with, or rather following, his wife, who had since served as the College Librarian for a long time, to start a life-long contribution to the College. His name is Philip Shen, now approaching retirement from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, but then a fresh Ph.D in theology from University of Chicago. Upon his initiation, through his hard-working and under his leadership, a new program of the College General Education evolved under the name of Integrative Basic Studies (its abbreviation IBS had since been a catch-word on campus). This new program had the following basic structure:

*Required Courses
For the first-year students:
1. Idea of a University
2.Art of Thinking
For the fourth (final)-year students:
3.Senior Seminar
Elective Courses
Typical liberal arts courses in arts, humanities, social science and natural science.
One of the striking features of this program was the emphasis on interdisciplinary interplay. All the required courses were arranged in such a way that small groups or tutorial sessions consisted of mixed membership of different disciplines both on the part of the students and on the part of teachers. Another remarkable feature was of course the final year seminar required for all graduating students. They had to form multi-disciplinary groups to engage in the research, presentation, discussion and report writing on issues of current academic or social concern.
The program was highly esteemed. It moved away from a narrow sense of general education to evolve into a contemporary world culture oriented educational engineering. In fact, the program has since been imitated and copied, in one form or another, by the sister Colleges and beyond. Shen's name comes very close as synonymous with IBS and general education! He will definitely remembered for his contribution on general education in the universities.
The above example---the Chung Chi IBS exemplar---offers a good indication that the structure and contents of a university general education program is dictated by the educational ideal and philosophy of the institution for which the program is to be implemented. University general education without a philosophy of education is blind. The implementation if it without commitment to the value of humanity is a corruption into expediency and convenience.

The Implementation and Administration of General Education
We have so far stated, through explication and exemplification that, for one thing, there is no real essence of university general education. What it is depends on what we make it to be and to become. Secondly, the shaping of university general education is determined by its governing educational philosophy. To contemplate in the ideal and purpose of general education is to engage in philosophical examination into education---the education of human kind, that is. To follow all this, let us now address the question of implementation and administration.
Is there one, and only one, single correct way of implementing and administering a certain conceived general education program in a university? Definitely no. This follows from the doctrine of methodological pluralism. However, are there more correct ways, than others, of implementation and administration with regard to the sound engineering and effective management of general education in a university? The answer, on the other hand, seems to be in the positive.
Again, let us start with the experience at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Ever since her inception in 1963, and until very very recently, the University had been operated in a 4-year honours degree system. A student was admitted into a major discipline. He would in addition declare a minor area of studies in his second or third year. Formerly, there was an intermediate examination for him to take at the end of the second year. And of passed, he would be advanced to the upper years of studies. There were degree paper examinations to take, which were grouped into two parts, one being taken in the third year, and another, in the forth year. There were 7 degree papers altogether, 5 were major papers and 2 minor ones. A student received classification on honours at graduation ranging from 1st class, 2nd upper, 2nd lower, 3rd, prass, to just recommended pass. The classification was originally determined by the results of degree examinations simpliciter. However, in addition to credit unit earning upper year courses that were offered directly or indirectly in relation to certain degree papers, there were courses, for both lower- and upper-year students that were not related to the degree examinations. First-year Chinese courses, first-year English courses, other elective courses, physical education courses and, above all, general education courses. Therefore, we might say that a student of the University was under a rather great pressure in his course of studies. He was in an educational system which was a mixture of the British degree-paper system and the American credit-unit system. A mixture in educational systems created unnecessary difficulties. One of which was the unspeakable complexity. This was a heavy blow to a free development of general education at the University.
Subsequently, some revisions and amendments were introduced to the system. For instance, the intermediate examinations were long ago abolished, and finally even the degree examinations went away in 1986. But the honours degree system remained. And the University even turned to three-year curriculum in 1991 against the wishes of the great majority of the teachers and students, who feared that the shortening of the study period threatened general education at the University, making it infeasible, if not impossible. Indeed, the 4-year /3-year controversy had been there with the University for at least 10 years. And each time the question seemed to be conceived as uniquely related to general education.
Of course the curricular system---the honours degree system, the three-year system, etc.---was not the only cause of "trouble" and matter of concern. There were other problems, difficulties, predicaments and puzzlements in the mind of a general education enthusiast. Let us enumerate just a few of them and present them here as some open questions.
(1) If the teaching departments are no longer in the hand of the Colleges, can general education courses offered by various departments continue to help cultivating the college spirit and promoting her educational ideal and value? Therefore, eight years ago, when out of necessity and parsimony (one way of achieving simplicity) we tried to put all college efforts together and create a university-wide program, at least one College was very suspicious, not without good reason. People feared that the University might unite and centralize the existing fairly good general education programs and then let it down or run it down or water it down. The current state of affairs is this: out of 6 various courses we let each College has the autonomy of design and implementation in up to two courses. Systems (now 4 in number) within a system. Up to present, we have had a happy co-existence between the University and the four Colleges. This could be termed "One university, many systems" so far as the implementation is concerned. And if we talk about a country, how many systems can reasonably be tolerated, welcomed and embraced? Can we not take it as a matter of comfort in thinking that multiplicity (one form of complexity) is itself conducive to the spirit of university general education?
(2) Do we need a 4-year curriculum system in order to introduce a university general education program and successfully run it? Historically, and this is still the case and is meant to be the case in the future, our general education programs ran through all years of studies for our students. That is, courses of general education were taken by the students relatively evenly in their 4 years, and now 3 years, of studies. A proposal to cut the 4 years to 3 years was then seen therefore as a " de facto" trumcation, or even as an effective elimination, of our general education. Likewise, when people in our sister university, the University of Hong Kong, tried in 1988 to introduce general education to their curriculum, they proposed an additional "Foundation Year" to be added to their 3-year system. Why is there all this magic number of "four"? Of courses, we may argue, four years is better than just three years. But how about a 5-year curricular system as is the case in Tsing Hua University in Beijing? Can we not create different possible systems, one being as effective as the others? A foundation year model, a final year model, a sandwich year model, an alternative year model, and so on.
(3) When talking about the form or structure, not the contents, of university general education, can we allow the possibility of general education "without" a general education program of studies in a university? For instance can each and every academic discipline be developed---designed, taught and learned---in such a way that the conceived general education purpose is automatically fulfiled? Or the other way about, as the case usually turn out to be, can there be general education courses taught and learned in such a manner that every bit of knowledge acquired and processed becomes uselessly specialized? Do we mean to provide the students with the chance and opportunity, or can we somehow attempt to guarantee the outcome and the results?
(4) Some people are anxious to see, and strongly advocate, that a "department" of general education be established in a university to teach general education courses. Question: Is teaching of general education courses categorically the same as performing general education duty, or engaging in general education endeavors, in a university settings? Are we trying to say, or to make it happen, that general education is an academic "specialty"---the specialty of general education, assuming that is not a contradiction in term? We at the University have so far resisted the idea of the relative autonomy of general education, maintaining that general education is a "public domain", a domain of studies for everybody to take and give, with all the rights, priviledges and obligations of course.
(5) We are certainly all afraid of turning a general education course into a second- class, or indeed even a third-class, course in a university environment. To guard against quality corrosion and uphold the academic respectability of our general education program, we need to draw a distinction not only between formal and informal general education, but also the knowledge-base general education and the value-base one, even through in both cases the demarcation line is thin and elusive. We are not afraid of uncertainty and imagination in the university education, and our students can benefit not only by cognition and sure knowledge, but also by speculation and a lot of knowing-nots. In practice, we have to determine in what sphere a relatively objective assessment both in research and in teaching and learning is feasible and practical. Of course, it goes without saying that methodology of teaching, learning and research is always far more important than the subject-matter of teaching and instruction in the field of general education. Methodological awareness among our students is all-important. The same must be said to our language teaching of that is considered general education. Language awareness among our students is more important than simply language skills. And that is why in our general education program we offer courses like "Thinking through Writing", both in Chinese and in English, to help the students in bringing to their consciousness the relationship between signs making and things signified in a certain cultural tradition. A semiotic course in nature. Indeed from a semiotic point of view, human sensibility is as important as his rationality. They jointly make up our humanity. But our humanity is in a process of evolutionary formation and transformation. What we need most here is an open mind concerning not only the matter of "value", but also the mater of "fact".
(6) When we mention university general education, some other concepts often slip into our mind. Concepts such as "holistic", "all-round", "liberal", "liberal arts", "Renaissant", "multi-disciplinary", "inter-disciplinary", and so on. However, we have to ask if these concepts are applicable equally to the same type of objects? For instance, when we use them, are we referring to a person, a university graduate, or the goal of the program, or the nature of a general education course, or a program of a cluster of courses putting together in a certain manner? Likewise, when we hear the mention of "integration" time and again, we should ask the question what is there to be integrated. The contents of a course, or the contents of all courses, or the contents of the whole program? And not less important than the above, who should do the integration and when? The teachers in or before the class? The students during their study or after graduation ("commencement" as called in the United States)? Of course, a general education program can be "integrative" without being "integrated". Too much ado often prejudices the vision of our students and invade their intellectual "integrity", making the very purpose of university general education. Analogously a program can be "multi"-disciplinary without becoming "inter-disciplinary right away. What are the pros and cons of this inter-ness (if there is indeed such a thing at all)? Integration of knowledge has long been a desperate dream of human kind. Just recently the logical positivists proposed a program of the unification of sciences and failed squarely. In fact, we do not have, and perhaps will never have, a single straight "language" to do all the knowledge acquisition and processing, not to mention value speculation and commitment.
(7) Finally, we seem to like uniformity or very close similarity , over difference and diversity, in our conception of general education. But we all know that philosophical essentialism is long dead. Not only that, what drives us to make one good progress after another in an academic discipline seems to be the difference in opinion among the researchers and preachers rather than the conformity and unification of thought among them. Why should the general education be so different from each other academic endeavors? The best policy again seems to be honest pluralism and sympathetic tolerance.
A word of explanation and clarification. First, when we talk about general education at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, we take the term in a narrower sense. We do not include a student's minor program of studies as part of general education. Nor his language skill courses, either Chinese or English, remedial or enhancement ones, nor his physical education courses, nor his other elective courses. Secondly, university general education courses are currently put into three categories. There is a required "area" of studies, namely the Chinese Culture. But there is no required "courses" even in the required area.(the Colleges do have their required courses). Here again we believe in multiplicity and difference.
In conclusion, let us remind ourselves that university general education, just like university language teaching for instance, can be implemented and administered in various different ways. For example, we can devise a scheme that is "rededial" in nature, or we can create a program that is an "enhancement" to some existing quality. Of course the distinction again could be a fuzzy one. We always aim at higher and higher degree of excellence. And as we try to make a point to emphasize throughout the discussion that there are more likely than not many different ways, some are probably but not necessarily better than others, to achieving our aims and goals as well as acquiring, maintaining and enhancing our qualities and values.

4.Tung Shih Chiao Yu or Tung Chai Chiao Yu---Only a Verbal Dispute and Merely a Matter of Semantics?
(To be discussed in Chinese)



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